Juno Movie Analysis Essay

Juno Movie Analysis EssayFemales have been stereotyped, from the prefect wife to the maid.. whatever the role, television, film and popular magazines ar full of images of women and girls who are typically white, desp datetely thin, with flawless skin. However, female stereotypes re main to thrive in the media we consume e rattling day. In 2007, director Jason Reitman, brought fourth into the world A drollery about growing up And the bumps along the way. It started as an independent film phenomenon but soon grew into a motion picture that captured the hearts and minds of millions of people. The exposure was entitled Juno. Juno reflects the changing gender push throughs and sociable attitudes regarding teenage pregnancy. Since the movie was release, there have been quite a few television shows with teen pregnancy as the main theme, namely ABC Familys The Secret Life of the American Teenager in 2008 and MTVs Sixteen and Pregnant in 2008 and Teen Mom in 2010. Twenty years ago, movi es and TV shows showing teenage pregnancy in such a positive light would have been seen as some kind of dislike and in all likelihood never have aired. If the issues of teenage pregnancy were to have come up at all, it would have been seen with very negative connotations. Juno opens the doors for TV shows such as the unmatched acknowledgment above and win overs the dominant ideology reflecting the change in social attitudes regarding teenage pregnancy and gender roles.Juno tells the story of teenager, Juno McGruff who becomes pregnant after a internal encounter with her friend Paulie Bleeker. Upon making her mind either keep the itch, have the baby and arrest it up for adoption, or to have an abortion, Juno decides to have the baby and to give it up for adoption. The rest of the movie goes on to tell the story of Junos pregnancy, including telling her parents that she is pregnant, the process of selecting a family in which to give her child to, her changing relationship wit h Paulie, and her workaday life and struggles as a pregnant high school student. In the end, the parents in which Juno decided to give her baby to, Mark and Vanessa, end up getting a divorce. Yet, Juno still decided to give her baby to Vanessa in the end. This is one of the biggest ways that I think Juno represents the changing gender roles. Aside from one minor meltdown toward the end of the movie, Juno seems to deal with her unplanned pregnancy in a somewhat cheerful, sarcastic manor. This shows that an unplanned pregnancy, something that would have been seen as almost unforgivable and an act that would ruin any four-year-old womans reputation, straight off is seen as an almost normal event, even though it may not be the most common. This to a fault shows the evolution of gender roles and values in modern cinema. Finally is the issue of how casual sex is pictured in the film. Juno and Paulie were not in any kind of formal relationship, at least, not at the starting time of the movie, when they had sex and Juno got pregnant. While Juno and Paulie do engage in casual sex, Juno is never called an offensive name, nor does it ever character reference that she has been with any other partners in the movie. This depiction of a casual encounter is yet another typesetters case of changing gender roles and values within the depiction of teenage women in the media.As most of us know by now, when a girl enters adolescence, she faces a series of loss and changes, the loss of self arrogance and not to mention the body changes. As psychologist have pointed out in recent years, adolescent girls in American are afflicted with a range of problem, including low self- esteem, eating disorders, binge drinking, date intrusion and other dating violence, teen pregnancy(Gilligan). Jessica L. speaks of the specific issues with the film in her paper, Sexual Subjectivity A Semiotic Analysis of Girlhood, Sex and Sexuality in the Film Juno. While situating sexual desire, biologi cal possibilities, and social responses to girls engagement in sexual intercourse at the center of its plot, Juno depicts the transgressive sexual agency of a young girl without substantially disrupting longstanding discourses of femininity. Though an analysis of the semiotics of girlhood within the film, she argues that the girl rule in this representation signifies an combination of two traditionally categorized concepts of femininity. Juno serves as a particularly intriguing example of the ways in which adolescent female sexuality is conceptualized within western culture during the early part of the twenty-first century (Willis). In her paper, she goes on to commend Diablo Cody, writer of Juno for her representation of Juno, in a visual era lacking widespread representations of strong youth female suits not sexually objectified or singularly delimit by their interest in romance (Willis). The way Juno is portrayed as a female character that is not overtly sexualized starts with her basic appearance. Rather than a stereotypical depiction of the female body as a sexual object, sexual desire is visibly expressed and acted upon by the girl character (Willis).The event that Juno was the one to initiate the sexual contact with Paulie challenges the traditional beliefs of gender roles in the area of teenage sexuality. In the movie Juno, teenage pregnancy is also being displayed in the almost positive way. In other media, pregnancy is displayed showing some kind of negative effect. The way media shows any kind of issue is commonly a direct reflection of social values. Angela McRobbie addresses this issue in her book Feminism and Youth Culture. The diversification of forms of media and the sophisticated shake-up of various categories of audience require that, while a consensual social morality mightiness still be a political objective, the chances of it being delivered directly through the channels of the media are a great deal less certain (McRobbie). But t he question still remains, is media influencing the way we think regard teenage pregnancy, or is it a correct reflection of our changing attitudes? I believe that the media influences the way we think of any issue in this case teen pregnancy. The authors of the article Suddenly Teen Pregnancy is Cool? suggest maybe a little of both. While they do point out all the instances of teenage pregnancy in recent years of popular culture, Movies like Knocked Up and Waitress, and celebrity moms including Nicole Richie and Jessica Alba, are part of a motion thats sweeping teen culture along with it American Idol star Fantasia Barrino became a mom at 17, and the last season of Degressi The Next Generation ended with Emma realizing that she might be pregnant. The media is awash in it, says David Landry, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a non-profit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health (Gulli).In Conclusion, Juno decides to avoid traditional family roles and still gives her child to Vanessa, even though she and Mark are divorcing. It is not unusual to see a single working mother nowadays, in particular more so now than thirty years ago. Even single working mothers are shown more frequently in the media such as in Gilmore Girls and the new show Parenthood. Through the examples of traditional family roles being challenged by Juno still giving Vanessa her baby, a positive representation of unwanted teenage pregnancy, and showing casual sex between teenagers, it is clear that the release of Juno opens the doors for TV shows such as the one mention above and changes the dominant ideology reflecting the change in social attitudes regarding teenage pregnancy and gender roles. We just need to remember like Margaret Mead once said, today our children are not brought up by parents, they are brought up by the mass media (mead).